Thursday, January 9, 2014

Cambrian Explosion Caused by Carnivores Caused by Oxygen?

That's the explanation advanced by a team from Scripps in La Jolla, Harvard and Andhra University in India. This is different than the great oxygenation event, which occurred much earlier. The argument is that consistently high oxygen levels in the oceans (where basically, everything interesting still lived at that time) allowed the development of more and more diverse carnivore strategies and therefore body plans.

Words to Live By

"...there is good and bad speculation, and this is not an unparalleled activity in science...Those scientists who have no taste for this sort of speculative enterprise will just have to stay in the trenches and do without it, while the rest of us risk embarrassing mistakes and have a lot of fun." - Dan Dennett